2 TN men drive 3,450km to take youth’s body to his Mizoram home

Aditi R & Shilarze Saha Roy TNN

Chennai:1.5.2020

At midnight on April 24, when he began his 3,450km journey from Tamil Nadu to Mizoram, carrying the body of 28-year-old Vivian Remsanga, ambulance driver S Chinnathambi did not dare tell his family where he was going. “I lied saying I was driving to Tirunelveli. I knew they would not understand why I was taking such a risk in the middle of a pandemic,” says Chinnathambi. “But for me, all I wanted was to give a family the chance to bury their son.”

On April 23, Vivian had died of a heart attack in his apartment, and with the city in lockdown, transporting the body to his hometown looked next to impossible, especially with air routes shut down. But that’s when Chinnathambi and fellow driver P Jeyendhran stepped up to take on the four-day-long journey nobody else was willing to.

After the Chennai Mizo Welfare Association coordinated the paperwork and state permits with health workers at the Royapettah GH mortuary, the two drivers, along with Vivian’s friend Raphael AVL Malchhanhima, began their arduous journey across six states — Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal, Assam and Meghalaya. “We had to pass through countless checkposts. We were interrogated by policemen particularly at the Tamil Nadu and West Bengal borders, and screened for Covid-19 before we were allowed passage,” says Jeyendhran.

Along the near-deserted highways, says Raphael, most restaurants were shut because of the lockdown.

The three had to travel for long hours before they would spot an eatery that was open.

Raphael AVL Malchhanhima flanked by ambulance drivers S Chinnathambi and P Jeyendhran